


You can imagine

by Anihan (Nakagami)



Series: Jim and John, and Moran watches on. [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Manipulation, Other, Reichenbach references, Teenage Female John Watson, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-10-03
Packaged: 2017-12-27 04:38:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakagami/pseuds/Anihan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(A/N: Takes place before You've got the love. P.S. I'm having major writer's block.)</p>
<p>Jim comes clean. Spoiler alert: It hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johann's confrontation of Jim.

Jim is back. The scent of enthusiastic cooking had yet to permeate the flat but the sound was quite distinctive, pots and pans clanking, fine china for tea, the benign crash of silverware against silverware. Incessant, inane humming. Johann rolls over and buries her face in the covers, left leg the only body part that remains covered by blanket but  _what does it matter_ , nothing could be worse than the event being prepared just outside her bedroom door.

Sunday brunch. Attendance mandatory because, "Tradition! You can't deny it," Jim had insisted, and Johann had never tried to deny him before.

Why would she have? Everyone loved a home-cooked meal. She'd had no idea that Jim had intended to use Sunday mornings to induct her slowly into the Moriarty household, and Jim had had no idea that she hadn't known, or so he claimed. Just the thought of the day before, of Jim's genuine rage at Johann's ignorance of his actions. You really mean that. You don't want me to die. What does that even mean. Have you really thought ill of me for all this time. All this time...

Johann shakes away the memory. The bed is too big for all those sorts of thoughts. She could wait and wallow until Jim came to get her for brunch, or... Or she could get up and do something about it.

If Johann Watson were a British male in her thirties gone to war and come back again, she might have sat up and said, "Sod this," and taken care of it herself. But she wasn't any of those things, so she rolled out of bed, said, "Fuck this!" and placed her bare feet directly on the floor for the first time in weeks. _Game Over,_ she thinks quietly. The hum of the generators underneath can be felt deep inside her bones.

"Jim," she calls from the doorway, and Jim drops something in exaggerated surprise. Looks like he was removing a new set of dinnerware from a box and washing them. Johann feels kind of giddy that Jim just lost another plate. "You, me, family meeting. Now. Moran too, if he's here."

The creepy smile is back on Jim's face, a characteristic response. He sets the plates aside and picks up a vegetable peeler. "He?"

Johann frowns. Ignoring the obvious deflection in Jim's tone, wasn't Moran...? But then again you couldn't be sure, what with those cover-all uniforms and mid-vocal range army captain barks. _Stay on track_ , she reminds herself, _don't get distracted_. If Jim is a bull then Johann's the flapping cape: Gutted if you blink.

"Family meeting, Jim. Now."

"Okay." He puts down the vegetable peeler and stares at her. Waiting. Apparently 'now' meant _Now._

Yet now that it is time for words to come, her mind is vacant. Johann shuffles her feet and fails to think of any sane way to phrase her questions. Jim waits.

"Cucumber?" she asks, eyes wandering to the bucket of vegetation in the sink.

He laughs and holds one out for her to take. (She doesn't take it.) "Zucchini," he corrects.

"Yeck."

"I _know,_ " he agrees with the appropriate disgusted facial expression. "They're good for you, though. Moran likes them."

Her eyes flick up to meet his and then away to stare at the door to the den. "An apology dinner, then, for upsetting her yesterday."

"Her?"

Johann's eyes narrow.

Jim mimes squinted eyes with one hand still holding a vegetable and the other with a peeler. "It's uncanny how you do that," he teases, singing. "If you knew the legacy you should come to bear, you'd stop looking at me like that."

She bristles. "Like what?"

"Like you can read me as the brothers do."

"Is this a euphemism?"

"What? No. How is that even remotely like a euphemism? A euphemism for what?"

Feeling foolish, cheeks puffed up with embarrassment, Johann doesn't answer. "What brothers then? Wright? Koch? Winchester? The Brothers Grimm?"

"The Marx Brothers."

"Who?"

Jim's eyes roll laboriously. "None of those."

Johann shuffles her feet against the lino and decides spontaneously that she really, really wasn't ready for this talk after all. "Really? 'Cause I have a few more 'W' options, those seem popular. How about Warner Bros?"

"You're mad," the man accuses with a dramatic huff, and the girl laughs at him. And then Johann does a double-take and stares at him blankly, realizing she had just _laughed_ with _Jim Moriarty_ after he.... 

Johann clears her throat. One shoulder lifts and falls, causing the pillowcase to droop a bit and bare a bit of skin. "Yes, must be. This is the most fun I've had in ages."

"You can have fun." Jim's brandishing a zucchini as he says it, forgotten in his hand. "Fun's allowed. Fun's _required._ I won't stop you."

The blonde stares at the zucchini as if it were a swordfish and therefore a legitimate reason for not meeting Jim's eyes. "Staying inside negates fun value from almost any activity," she protests after a minute.

"TV."

"More fun at a theatre."

"Home theater."

"I meant musical theatre."

"We could do that here."

"I'd really rather you not."

Feeling faintly overwhelmed, Johann sits heavily on the other side of the table, glances at Jim's face and then away again. Jim, for his part, was getting way too comfortable with the easy banter, the free smiles. It was time to get down to business. ( _To defeat... the Huns._ ) She snorts. A smirk flashes over her face and she hides it behind a steadying breath, pleased when both come out without a hint of nerves.

"You're getting me off track, Jim. We have to talk."

"John. We _are_ talking," Jim teases, and then pretends to fall into a let-us-get-serious pose: He shifts his chair to a right angle from the table and leans forward eagerly, using the zucchini to prop up his chin, the git. "Just say what you want to say, baby girl. I'm listening."

There is a momentary struggle between Johann's curiosity and her purpose, and the former wins out. "What brothers did you mean, then?"

Jim's smile is angelic, capable of flinging warning shards of fear into the air. The fine line between 'acceptable questioning' and 'things that will make Jim snap' is palpably being toed.

"Doesn't matter. Tell me what you wanted to say."

Being brushed off doesn't lighten Johann's mood any. The words _Fuck you and the horse you rode in on_ are the most tempting in the world (Moran _had_ taught her that one) but she doesn't say that. She sits calmly opposite Jim at the table and folds both hands in her lap, and glares him down.

That fucking smile. 

"Okay. Yes. Well. So you legally adopted me. Legally? Right. It was legal. And then you took me away without any explanation at all and heavily implied that I was being held against my will. That about sum things up?"

Jim shrugs.

She struggles with not lashing out.

"So you legally adopt me and then lead me to think otherwise. Why in the world would you do that? I guess it sort of explains how you've been treating me but no, really, it doesn't explain why any of this was necessary, or even remotely logical. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking," he drawls cheerfully, "I'd wait and see how long it'd take you to catch on."

A frown. "No, no you weren't, you're not as demented as you'd like me to think. You were worried about something-- probably the same thing you're worried about now, me leaving you. But no wait, no, I've already proven that I have no intention of leaving, and I have no plausible way to get out of here so I will stay whether I'd like to or not, so it wasn't me you were worried about, it must have been someone else. So I'm going to make a guess here and I want you to promise me you won't be mad about it." 

God, the way his face lights up is cherubic, ecstasy and love prominent everywhere but in his eyes. "I promise," he declares solemnly, and is it worse that he seems sincere when he says that? Johann clears her throat.

"Is this about Sherlock?" she asks, and a cloud of malevolent delight bursts upon Jim.

"John. Darling. If you had known about Sherlock all this time, why the hell didn't you say anything?"

She bristles. "How was I supposed to know who you were flipping out over?"

"It's Sherlock Holmes! Who else could there be?"

An easy retort is busy on her tongue but Johann's mouth quickly snaps shut. Realization, when it hits him, is as visible as poems on his face for barely a moment.  _Fuck._   _She knows Mycroft too,_ he must be thinking, and Johann winces again. Yet another thing she hadn't known he hadn't known. Hands erratic and eyes wild, Jim stands and begins to pace.

The first time Jim walks behind her back she does nothing: The second time, Johann trips him. Jim stumbles and catches the edge of the table, thankfully not knocking it over and spilling the rest of the crockery all over in the process.

"Do that again and you'll find yourself missing toes, my darling," he says lowly. These words, it appears, are a breaking point for Johann. Her spine straightens and her shoulders square, and she glares at him defiantly. 

"Please, can you just shut up for one night with all those threats! I'm done, Jim. _Done._ Can't we, for just one night, act like a family?"

An excited tremble is in his eye; The anger roiling beneath the surface is replaced instantly with mirth, excitement and awe glowing on his face. "My word, dear child. This is emotional blackmail." He grins, eyes and mouth comically wide. "You're _manipulating_ me. John!"

She sighs and refuses to roll her eyes. "Oh, and you'd know all about that, wouldn't you, _Father_."

"Yes, I would." Jim smiles brightly, the grin lighting up his whole face. He steps toward her with arms outstretched, obviously fishing for a hug. "Oh, John! I'm so _proud_."

Johann stares at him for a moment.

"I can't take this," she says at last, and flees back to her room. 

And so yes, Johann does manage to get out of Sunday Brunch that week, and she's actually quite proud of that. Being able to deny Jim makes her blood sing and her heart pound, and  _god_ does it feel good to win just once, never mind two days in a row...

But the day is not yet over and pride must cometh before the fall.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As of this chapter, please welcome my beta, Brookebond! 
> 
> This chapter is the reason for the warning tags.

As always happens when Jim decides he wants a chat, Johann's face is untroubled, her fears untapped, she is completely at rest and Jim sighs ruefully at the sight.

She's asleep.

"It always seems to happen like this." Jim shakes his head mournfully. He speaks in an undertone although the room is empty and no one is listening. "You look so at ease and here I come, I just have to ruin it."

Johann snuffles her pillow and his face softens. Warmth suffuses him as her breath comes out in a sweet little sigh and he leans down and kisses her on the cheek.

Then drops a newspaper on her face.

Johann yelps awake up by flailing about - so she had truly been sleeping - and manages to knock every pillow to the floor before righting herself. It takes almost eight seconds for her to recognize him, and another four before she stops floundering and pauses for breath, crouched with her back against the headboard and breathing heavily. Jim isn't hiding his smile as he sits at the end of the bed to wait it out.

When her attention is entirely on him and not on her brief panic, he gives a single order.

"Read."

The ruffled girl picks herself up with unsurprising indignity, giving Jim the stink eye that he, predictably, ignores. She glances around at the disorganized pages of the newspaper, both bewildered and half awake, and yet one headline manages to catch her eye.

This isn't a movie on the telly. Johann doesn't gasp dramatically; nothing falls from her hands to break upon hitting the floor; she doesn't faint. There's no sound to her reaction at all. She just reads the headline once, glances at the three separate photos of three different men beneath it, and then closes her eyes. The headline reads:

**Double Suicide: Fake Detective Takes His Own Life, Convinces Beloved Actor To Do The Same.**

The world seems to stop, although she knows it doesn't actually, and she feels intensely light-headed with recognition before the sensation plummets inevitably into sick. The photographer hadn't captured Sherlock's face in that first picture, the one labeled _Holmes, aged 34_ \-- well, no, it probably was Sherlock, but not hers. Not her Sherlock. The man in the photo may have had Sherlock's curls and her sharp eyes and all of her blistering beauty, but Sherlock would never-- that.

She'd never. Not that.

No.

It might be _a_ Sherlock, yeah, _maybe_ , but not hers. Please.

Johann's brain stutters, her mind repeating it mockingly, _Not her Sherlock, not her Sherlock, nothersherlock,_ as if there were a difference to Johann if Sherlock were male or female or old or a squid or anything else. As if Sherlock were made up of meat, and red, and skin instead of wicked humor, love, fresh ideals, passion. As if 'Sherlock' could be quantified, isolated. Eliminated.

As if pavement could take Sherlock away from her any more than slipping between galaxies had. No.

Just no.

Johann sits up in bed and slowly pulls the newspaper close, and she reads it. She reads the news article about her best friend, the Sherlock who was male and over twice her age, the one she'd never got to meet before he was gone.

There's talk of tricks and lies and being paid to be a public adversary, of defamation and lost hope, of Richard Brooke allegedly choking on his own gun and of Sherlock Holmes choking on the concrete below. When she's done and Jim pulls her into his lap for a cuddle, she allows it. What further harm could be done?

Jim hums in her hair, cradles her, holds her close. He says, "Your hair smells good," and still she doesn't move.

"God," she wheezes.

"Shh, no. You're fine, baby doll." He busses the closest part of her body to his mouth, places the kiss directly on an eyebrow, and she pretends that his action was what caused the liquid pooling behind that eye to escape, the first tear in a burgeoning stream down her cheeks. The other eye has no excuse.

She lets out a sob. He shushes her. He rubs her back and she curls into him and ah, _at last_ she weeps openly into his body. Jim doesn't say a word against it. What he does say is worse.

"I had to know who I could be before I could prevent the same folly in myself," he explains softly in her hair, rocking her until she's stopped crying, until her breath has slowed and she's no longer gasping. He welcomes her snuffles into his collar, doesn't mind that there's snot and tears ruining the perfect folds of his suit, just acknowledges that she's hurting and that this time, _this time,_ he can help. Although she hasn't spoken at all, he shushes her again. "Shh, shh, let me speak. You know about shadows, don't you? About the people with our same souls who inhabit other worlds? That actor on the roof of Saint Bartholomew's, he was my shadow in the world before mine. He called himself Richard Brook. He..."

Jim keeps speaking but Johann isn't listening anymore. Being expected to read _that_ newspaper article and then immediately chat about it-- no, just no, even more no, a thousand times and more no, _she can't take it._ Johann interrupts him quickly by slapping a hand over his mouth. She removes her fingers quickly.

"So you've...researched yourself, then. All of the shadows of yourself from every world you know about, I bet, knowing you."

Her mouth clicks shut. She knows she's rambling. Awkwardly, she clears her throat and adds, "All of your shadows from every world," then pauses again. Searching for a new topic as this one is obviously going nowhere, she wipes her nose on his shirt and mumbles, "How did you keep track of you all?"

Jim allows the subject change, allows the snotty nuzzle. He hushes her as if he knows her reluctance and squeezes her head against his chest. He nuzzles her hair and again, she accepts his affection.

"How did I keep track of my shadows? It's _easy._ You realize we're always the same person, no matter which world or the circumstances we grew up in. There's always a pattern, a code, a _game_ behind how our lives will play out. You know as much already, John. Names. Most of mine go by surname, although some of the kiddies like being called James."

"You go by Jim," she points out, and he squeezes her.

"And what can you deduce about that?"

"Ran out of letters, couldn't afford the A?" she jokes before she can stop herself. She winces.

But Jim wasn't focusing on that any longer: He didn't care if she were mirthful or mournful, just that she obeyed. He stares at the girl in his lap as if a stranger had broke in in the night.

"I said deduce. What do you know about the science of deduction?"

She blinks up at him. It is an unfortunately innocent expression. "Uh, deductive logic? It's just math, isn't it? Theoretical sentence math. If a then b, if no b then no a. Right?"

"Deductive maths," he says, tone flat.

"Well, duh. That's what deduction means." She frowns a bit, realizing the flaw in his words. "But wait, if you all prefer James and Moriarity, why do you like to be called Jim? Sounds a little childish, doesn't it?"

That question, so innocently asked, makes Jim laugh. "Sure," he allows, and he brushes the misgivings away. He rearranges their positions on the bed, leaning against the headboard so that they'd both be comfortable while they talked. Johann hesitates, but she lays against him all the same. Jim purrs.

"I knew Richard before that... paper was published," he says slowly, and he soaks up Johann's full-body shiver with a slow smile pressed into her curls. "He was the first shadow I met in person and he always preferred the alias so I've always been Jim, even with him. A James was the next one I met. Professor Moriarty was World Nine, Eight was also a Jan-- well, no, not also, so I'll keep her a secret. For now. I have always been Jim to all of them, the baby of the group."

"You know I'm not going to remember all that, don't you?" The girl's reeling from all the information and Jim smiles, kisses her brow again until she shakes him off. "That's... a lot of shadows. A lot of worlds."

"Mm, yes. With that much data it was not difficult to see a pattern. All three Jameses were killed by a Holmes, and Jims... take the lives of others. Which is not a euphemism, by the way. I'm not a killer."

"'Taking someone's life' isn't a euphemism? What does that even mean?"

"Shh, no questions. As I was saying... Richard Brook."

Johann snorts, mutters, "You were talking about Jims, not Richards," under her breath, but Jim ignores her.

"Dear old Reichey - did Sherly ever tell you about that, the Reichenbach stalemate? Two geniuses, one real and one false, and then they both die... but neither really do." Johann's just giving him a strange look so he goes on with a dismissive wave of a hand. "No matter, it's a legend for later, we've got to finish this tale before we move on to the next. So Reich. Richard. Whatever. He's a looney, an absolute nutter, but more cuckoo than a cuckoo's nest. But brilliant, much more so than he deserved, and in the end he did what all people do. He died."

If Johann has the feeling that Jim's describing himself, she keeps her mouth shut. No need to interrupt his babbling. "How did he die?" she asks instead, softly mumbled against his shirt collar.

"Richard Brook killed himself because he was insane."

Okay, yes, there it was, there is now a need to interrupt his babbling. "Just to be clear, you mean the one you told me about, on the roof. Barts. The one who... just before...."

"Yes. Him."

"The paper says he shot himself in the head." She pauses, then frowns. "It says Sher-- the detective, it says he convinced Richard to do it. That's what Brook said in trial, that he was an actor paid to... to be the final problem. To be his adversary."

"Yes..." Jim says leadingly. He kicks the newspaper closer to her hands encouragingly but she doesn't touch it, even flinches away. "Fine," he capitulates, and pulls her into a stronger embrace tucked up against his throat. "Near the end of the second page, it says who Brook was paid to play."

He waits so she takes the bait and says, "Oh, really? Who was that?" Not that she really cared.

Jim rolls both eyes laboriously, pulls the newspaper across them both and holds it so that she can read. Annoyed, but obedient, she does. There, at the bottom of the second page, just as he said...

"...an IT tech named Jim..."

Johann's breath catches.

It's him. It all makes sense. Jim takes on the lives of others by becoming someone else: Jim - this Jim, the one who is currently humming and nosing her hair - is an actor, a storyteller, a fable! James Moriarty becomes Richard Brook, pretends to be Jim, and then he dies. And this wasn't a one-time occurrence if Jim's reaction is anything to go by, no, this is the pattern of all his shadows: The Jameses are killed by Holmeses and every Jim kills himself.

Because he is insane.

"Oh."

Meaning Jim, this Jim, he thinks he's insane. (Which he is.) He thinks he's going to end up killing himself. (Which he...might. He very well might.) Because he's insane, so very, very insane, and this is all a game to him. It's the job. It's his own life, laid out before him, ended by his own actions. So she says it again, "Oh," and breathes out slowly, not knowing what else to do.

"Yes," he says, face entirely too warm to be quite so blank. The care, the kindness, is an empty happiness, because he knew; he had known this entire time what the end result would be. "Oh," he whispers, mocking.

Johann shivers and lets out the breath she had been holding. They take a moment to separate, she pulls away and allows her to think for a moment in peace. Just for a moment.

Then he rearranges their limbs on the bed until he is lying reclined against the blankets, feet above the headboard, arms splayed on the sheets, and she is lying down his front as if he were a settee, head pillowed once again on his chest, one hip wedged against his. One of her arms falls against his side, a perpetual half-hug. Their breathing evens out, and they relax into each other for a long moment of peace.

Jim stirs after a few minutes of this. "The paper lied, you know. Always does. Richard took the younger Holmes out on the roof and put snipers on his favorite people: a Lestrade, a Hudson-- Ah, I see you recognize them. Good. --and of course his partner in crime, a Watson. Little Sherlock had no choice if he wanted his boytoy back. The other two, maybe, but Sherlock never could manage to let go of this one pet. John. So you know why Sherlock jumped, but I bet you don't know why Brook did what he did."

"To get away from long depressing stories?" she hazards.

He ignores her. "I won't keep you guessing; this is my story and I think we've both had quite enough rising action. The key to ending the game was getting me to make the wrong move." Johann notices the shift from 'him' and 'Brook' to 'me' and 'my' in a heartbeat, and her hands are suddenly slick with sweat. "There was always a bargain to be made, some plea that might have convinced me to let one of the three go. Maybe even two of them, if the offer was good enough. The code to end the stalemate was inside my head...and I believe Sherlock was smart enough to figure that out."

"But that would only give him some time. One or two out of the three, there's no way he'd be okay with that. He'd want more, he'd want them all."

"I knew that. I wasn't thinking straight but I wouldn't have given him everything, not when he'd not earned it. He would never get John back, never, I'd never allow it." The words are fierce but his body language is lax. One hand comes up to pet her hair.

"I still don't see what all that has to do with me. Me-me, I mean, not the other me. My Sherlock never had to make that choice, although I guess yours did-- Oh. Oh!" Her eyes light up. Johann pulls away despite Jim's protests and beams triumphantly down at him. "That's why me. Me because of Sherlock, the man Sherlock, what he did for man-John."

Johann's on a roll now. She sits up on top of Jim, knees to either side of his waist and hands fisted on his chest, easy enough to glare down into his face. "It wasn't about my Sherlock at all, or even my Moriarty; it was always about yours. Your Sherlock killed himself for love. But you, the other you, Richard, shot himself in the head for a game! And not even to win it, he did it so that Sherlock either had to die or..."

Excitement thummed along her words and by the end of it she must be screaming, but Jim just lets her yell in his face, too happy to stifle her excitement.

"Or be brilliant, Jim did it to force Sherlock into being interesting again!" Her eyes widened as she reeled with the implications of her realizations. "You... want someone who takes you out of the game, gives you something else to live for. You want someone in your life who is proven to be worth dying for."

"I want someone in my life whom a man near my equal has thought worthy of dying for. There aren't many of either of those. But. Well. Your Sherlock could be my equal, and you." He smiles lovingly. "You're you."

"You don't want to be crazy," she says, just to be clear, and he shakes his head negatively in order to agree with her. "You don't want to sacrifice yourself just because it could be the next best move on the chessboard, you want an actual reason to go on. You want me to make your life valuable."

"Bingo, kitten. You win a prize."

She frowns. "But you said Sherlock doesn't just do it for John. There's a Lestrade and a Hudson too."

Jim's eyes darken considerably and the easy-going manner drops. "Oh? Would you like company here, my dear; are you lonely? I could find you a nice cop, and a granny too, ooh, wouldn't that be nice!"

Her eyes widen and she's immediately backtracking. He makes to get up and she throws all of her weight on his chest, holding him down. "I-- no, please, wait, I hadn't meant that! I promise, please, I will be enough, just please don't kidnap anyone else!"

"You can't make me that promise," he says darkly.

"No. I do promise, I do. I mean it. I will give you something to live for," she vows recklessly, because who wouldn't. She only realizes her mistake when Jim's angles soften, his face a mask of contentment once more.

Jim reaches out for her with both arms, smile once again bright and wide.

"I knew you would," he says, cheery. The last nail in the coffin is his promise in return, a brisk, "And I will hold you to that, my dear. Now come here."

"I," she says, and stops. Watsons don't go back on promises, and this promise is kind of a doozy. "Oh," she breathes out.

"Yes," he agrees amiably. "Oh, yes 'oh'. Are you second guessing already?"

Johann stands and wobbles a bit, but she pushes away Jim's offer to help. She steps away and leans against her bookshelf (empty of books, it sways also) instead. "Just give me a minute," she says.

She's panting, maybe hyperventilating a bit. This is not a task that should be haphazardly undertaken, and she's kind of just jumped into the deep end.

"I think," she begins, and stops. Jim doesn't stir, letting her think. She doesn't want to say it. She doesn't want to admit what she's thought of. She does anyway. "I think I am okay with this."

"You 'think'?"

Johann stares down at him defiantly.

"Yes. I think I am."

 


End file.
